Great Exudations

Here are my two:

1. Play your own damn ball. Don’t worry about what others are doing.
2. Fuck keeping score. In the end, all numbers are essentially meaningless.

I’m not sure what this is,

And I’m not sure where this goes.

My only hope’s that what it serves

Isn’t going to, you know, like

Totally ex-plode!

I’ve only seen “The Last Waltz” once in its entirety and that was at the Avalon Theater in Washington, DC in the early 80’s. As a teenager, I lacked the necessary broad musical context for the work and the various performers and have since seen it only in fragments. The film commemorates The Band’s final appearance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. They were joined in celebration by numerous special guests including Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Neil Diamond and Dr. John and the show was filmed by Martin Scorsese who deployed seven 35mm cameras. Reared on classic rock, I knew the radio hits of The Band like “The Weight” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and had a vague sense of their connection to Bob Dylan. It wasn’t until my 40’s, when taking night music classes in Chicago, that the picture began to fill in. In the interval I had enjoyed several of Robbie Robertson’s solo projects, including “Robbie Robertson” (1987) and “Contact from the Underworld of Redboy” (1998), an homage to aboriginal Canadian music (his mother was of Cayuga and Mohawk origin). And then the learning-ellipse cycled back round, and I was introduced to the group’s deeper cuts and nuanced history. To date, my favorite number is their rousing live version of “Ophelia,” from which I have screen-captured a few grainy YouTube stills. Levon Helm’s vocal performance is in such unity with the song that I can never listen to another version. And I love the added color of the Preservation Hall-style brass parts. But there was also a small, magical moment I noticed years ago that I have since clung onto. It’s something I find myself emulating at times and for reasons that were never entirely clear to me. At least not until I re-watched it following the recent death of Robbie Robertson. If you blink you might miss it.

The camera switches from behind the singing Levon Helm to an oblique shot of Robbie Robertson, who stands at the stage front playing guitar and mouthing along with the vocal but out of the spotlight. There is a joyful expression in his shadowy face (above) that in these stills takes on a prayer-like quality as he glances back towards his bandmate Helm. Now, much has been said of the enmity between the two in the group’s aftermath with recriminations and charges of revisionism, most of it related to songwriting credits and drug use. But what I choose to believe is that despite this, as Robbie’s body language for me reveals, there was an enduring and strong brotherly connection. And, after all, who can go harder at one another than two close brothers?

So then the spotlight hits Robertson who joins in on the refrain “Ophelia, where have you gone…” before laying down a little guitar fill and giving another, more deliberate look-back at Helm. Of course, eye contact is something band members do frequently to stay in rhythm or to signal a new song section. And this was, let’s not forget, a concert being purposefully filmed. But I don’t think you can fake that kind of energy and the spontaneous search for connection. It seems far too real and he looks nearly ecstatic during this segment. I think it says something about the connectivity of music generally (think of the joy dancing and singing next to complete strangers at a concert), and even more so the playing of music with others in a band (for a waltz you need but two dancers and a band). For my own part, I happened to be working from home a few weeks back and was doing some dishes after breakfast. There was no music playing, but household chores have their own rhythm and I found myself doing the body-turn-glance-back like RR to the cabinets behind me (the move is a little stiff because it simulates one with a guitar on your back). As I noted above, it’s a quirky motor-tic I employ from time to time, one which I might have assumed was in homage as much to the song as the man. But then later that afternoon, the story of RR’s passing appeared in my aggregator. I immediately got that little pang that attends these strange moments. Let’s call them spiritual convergences, as I’m no great believer. I texted a few friends about it, and then I re-watched the video to finally see what I had been missing: a momentary embodiment of the friendship that is music and the music that is friendship. Alas. And let this also be a celebration of the infinite number of potential tiny and seemingly insignificant moments (nano-takes) in our lives that, once noticed, can enrich and enliven and maybe even create new meaning for us as we combat life’s inevitable drudgeries. For this, I give thanks. And, if you’ll indulge me, I tried to express these feelings in a short poem:

“Let’s Look Up”

If you’re looking up at me

And yet don’t meet my eye

Just know that I’d been looking, too,

But had to turn in time.

In time, on time for one last climb,

Each playing his own way,

When bendings blend in proud display of

A song that longs to stay.